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Thursday, March 20, 2014

The sun at the vernal equinox point in the sky. The horizontal line the sun is crossing is the celestial equator. The red line is the sun’s path, the ecliptic. The sun is heading to the upper left. Created using Stellarium.

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Saturday, December 21, 2013

The sun has reached its southernmost point and will now begin its journey back north.

It’s the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, summer in the Southern.

Here in South Florida, the length of daylight varies by only about two hours between summer and winter, but for those of you up north, the long dark time is beginning to wane, even if the weather says it’s the bleak midwinter.

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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Traditionally — and when I say that I mean “back when I was a kid” — the Tuesday after Labor Day was the first day of school. Now it’s the first day back after the first holiday of the school year, which started two weeks ago.

Based on what the folks on TV would have you believe, though, it’s the first real working day after the summer vacation that began the Friday before Memorial Day and it’s been all beaches and roadtrips and hot dogs and sunscreen ever since. Now they’re all gearing up for cold weather and winter, and I’ll bet that when I get home tonight there will be a Christmas catalog from Harry & David in the mail.

Here in South Florida, the only difference between before Labor Day and after is that we note with trepidation the approach of peak you-know-what season next week. Fortunately we’ve made it through the summer without any cyclonic disturbances coming ashore, and it’s been eight years since we’ve had a good — meaning bad — hit. But there are still three months left in the season, so even when autumn arrives in three weeks and the season switches over from wet to dry in the middle of October, we’re still checking out the weather sites and wondering if Invest 98L is going to get a name and a place.

So for those of you in places where the seasons change radically, where the frost is already making an early appearance, where the aspens are already turning and the nights are getting longer, enjoy the inexorable change. For me, I’m glad to see the late hibiscus bloom.

The Sunshine State could have extended daylight saving time if one state senator gets his way.

Florida state Sen. Darren Soto, a Democrat, introduced the “Sunshine Protection Act” earlier this year that would make daylight saving time permanent year round. Why? Soto, an attorney, said that he was just tired of leaving his law office in the dark.

“It’s been bothering me for years,” Soto told POLITICO. “It’s something I’d think about leaving the office in the winter when it’s dark out.”The more he thought about it, the more he said it made sense.

“From time to time, we have to look at rules and laws in our society and re-examine them to see if they still serve the purpose that we need,” said Soto, whose district is near Orlando.

He added: “We are the sunshine state and a big tourism state — it would allow constituents to have an extra hour to enjoy the beach, enjoy the amusement parks, maybe go out to the eat. So in that sense, it’s an economic issue.”

Actually here in South Florida, the difference between winter and summer sunshine isn’t all that much — about an hour and a half this far south. But then if we were on DST all the time, we’d be on Atlantic Standard Time, the same as Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense as far as the rest of the country is concerned. Prime time on TV would start at 9 p.m., which means that the networks would either lose a lot of viewers here in Florida, or they’d have to switch us to the Mountain Time zone and prime time would start at 7.

It’s also a matter of geography. A lot of people think that Florida is way east, but if you look at the map, Miami is on the same longitude as Pittsburgh. Most of the state lines up with the Midwest, and there’s a section of Florida up in the panhandle that is in the Central Time zone, so they’d move to the Eastern zone.

The simple solution is to move the entire country to DST permanently, let Arizona become part of the Pacific Time zone (they have their own issues with the Navajo reservation in the northeast part of the state observing DST while the rest of the state doesn’t) and knock off the switch every year. But then Canada would have to follow suit, as would Mexico since they do a lot of business south and north of the border.

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